u expect--to manage that. Someone's sure to find out and tell
him."

"Not necessarily," he answered.

"What about the servants?" persisted Nan. "They'll hardly allow my
arrival at Mallow in the early hours of the morning to pass without
comment! I really think, Peter," she added with a wry smile, "that it
would have been simpler all round if you'd allowed me to run away."

His eyes sought hers.

"Won't you trust me, Nan?" he said patiently. "I'm not going to take
you to Mallow to-night. I'm going to take you to Sandy's mother."

"To the mater!"

Sandy fairly gasped with astonishment.

Eliza, narrow-minded and pre-eminently puritanical in her views, was
the very last person in the world whose help he would have thought of
requisitioning in the present circumstances.

Peter nodded.

"Yes. I've only met her two or three times, but I'm quite sure she is
the right person. I believe," he added, smiling gently, "that I know
your mother better than you do, Sandy."

And it would appear that this was really the case. For when, in the
small hours of the morning, the trio reached Trevarthen Wood and Sandy
had effected an entry and aroused his mother, there followed a brief
interview between Peter and Mrs. McBain, from which the latter emerged
with her grim mouth all tremulous at the corners and her keen eyes
shining through a mist of tears.

Sandy and Nan were waiting together in the hall, and both looked up
anxiously as she bore down upon them.

To the ordinary eye she may have appeared merely a very plain old
woman, arrayed in a hideous dressing-gown of uncompromising red
flannel. But to Nan, as the bony arms went round her and the Scottish
voice, harsh no longer but tender as an old song, murmured in her ears,
she seemed the embodiment of beautiful, consoling motherhood, and her
flat chest a resting-place where weary heads might gladly lie and
sorrowful hearts pour out their grief in tears.

"Dinna greet, ma bairnie," crooned Eliza. "Ma wee bairnie, greet nae
mair."

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE WHITE FLAME

It was not till late in the afternoon of the day following upon her
flight from Mallow that Nan and Peter met again. He had, so Sandy
informed her, walked over to the Court in order to see Kitty.

"I think he has some private affair of his own that he wants to talk
over with her," explained Sandy.

"It's about his wife, I expect," answered Nan dully. "She's had
sunstroke--and is ordered home